


How To Make A Chocolate Cake (The Secret's in the Ingredients)

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Cake, Friendship, Gen, Women Being Awesome, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evelyn agrees to teach the Doctor how to make chocolate cake.  It’s not as simple as it sounds…</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Make A Chocolate Cake (The Secret's in the Ingredients)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hapax_legomenon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapax_legomenon/gifts).



> I saw your request for Six, Evelyn & cooking, and couldn't resist. This was only intended as a last minute ficlet for Madness, but it grew.

It would not be an exaggeration to say the cooking lesson had become an epic venture and Evelyn was regretting offering to teach the Doctor how to cook her own special chocolate cake. After all, she really should have known by now that nothing was ever straight-forward with the Doctor.

To be fair to him, he’d been reasonable enough so far, which she took as a (justified) compliment to her chocolate cake, or at least, he had once she’d firmly vetoed any suggestions about ‘improving’ it. (As she’d told him: “Doctor, if you want to make a Venusian triple-layer chocolate cake, by all means do so, but if you want to learn how to make _my_ version, I suggest we stick to my recipe, pedestrian and parochial as it may be.”)

It was the ingredients that had been the problem, or lack of them, to be precise. The Doctor either hadn’t had certain items in the TARDIS, or if he did, it was some sort of alien substitute that Evelyn didn’t trust (especially not that green liquid that he assured her worked wonders as an alternative to baking powder, and hardly tasted at all) or merely that they were out of date by several hundred years. And, of course, the Doctor couldn’t pop out to get a bit of baking powder from the twenty-third century’s equivalent of Tesco’s without getting involved with the downfall of an oppressive government by a group of plucky rebels. (Evelyn’s own role in this was, she felt, only natural in the circumstances – she could hardly have stood by and let them shoot that poor boy.)

 

_The Doctor had found her tied to a stake, awaiting an execution that seemed to have been forgotten by the powers that be – very likely thanks to the Doctor and some of their new friends. “Oh, thank heaven,” she said in relief when he finally turned up. “I was beginning to think you’d never come.”_

_She must have sounded a little too grateful. He set to untying the knots, which meant she couldn’t see his expression, but she could hear the naked concern in his voice. “Evelyn. Whatever did they do to you?”_

_“Oh, it wasn’t that,” she said. “It wasn’t very nice, obviously, but only what passes for normal when on an outing with you. It’s only that I really don’t think my joints can take much more of this.”_

_The Doctor tugged at the ropes: she could feel them loosening at last. “Well, don’t worry – I’ll soon have you out of here!”_

_“Just one thing, Doctor,” said Evelyn. “You do still have that baking powder, don’t you?”_

 

Next, it had been a lack of chocolate – and Evelyn did pride herself on using real chocolate in her cakes, and not merely cocoa powder. The Doctor, rather than risk another supermarket, brought her to what he claimed was the premier planet for chocolate manufacture anywhere in the universe, at the very height of their confectionary powers.

Of course, as it turned out, they had in fact arrived during the worst possible moment in the planet’s history. Following repeated attacks by off-worlders, their chocolate manufacturing had dropped to record lows, poverty was widespread, and their government had fallen a year ago. Naturally, Evelyn was happy to give a few suggestions regarding the chocolate production and so on, and, really, the rest had all been a silly misunderstanding.

 

_“Queen Evelyn, eh?” said the Doctor, now that he’d finally been released from jail. (It turned out that apparently the natives had far less fond memories of him than he did of them and he’d been instantly arrested for unprincipled theft of experimental chocolates, no matter how much he kept insisting that it had all been the Master’s fault. “I couldn’t have left those chocolates there, not after what he’d done to them, could I?”) “I do like the crown. It suits you.”_

_Evelyn put up a hand to her head, and hastily removed the circlet. She didn’t feel it was really her, regardless of her professional fascination with bygone monarchs. “Oh. I’d forgotten I had it on.”_

_“During your reign, you did, I trust manage to get your hands on a bar or two of premium Ayllian slab chocolate?”_

_Evelyn nodded. “Of course I did. They seemed relieved that was all I wanted. I hope it’s all you say it is. It doesn’t look all that much better than Cadbury’s to me.”_

_“Cadbury’s!” said the Doctor, as if she’d uttered blasphemy. He might actually have staggered back a little. (Really, his taste for melodrama and exaggeration did_ not _improve. She suspected he’d learnt how to act at some point in the eighteenth century. It would explain a lot.) “You hold in your hands the most refined, the most –”_

_“In my handbag, actually, but don’t let facts get the way of your rhetoric.”_

_He eyed her repressively. “You hold in your hands some of the finest chocolate the universe has ever seen and you talk to me of Cadbury’s! Cadbury’s!! Humans. Still, I suppose you can’t help it if your feeble tastebuds aren’t up to the challenge.”_

_“Well,” said Evelyn, ignoring the insult to her species (as usual), “it is supposed to be_ my _recipe, isn’t it?”_

 

Now that they were safely back in the TARDIS kitchen, Evelyn turned to him. “Doctor, please tell me that we’re not lacking any of the other ingredients, because if we have to go on any more shopping trips like the last two, I’m not sure I’ll survive.”

“Oh, you underestimate yourself,” said the Doctor, giving her a smile. “Your majesty.”

“Honestly! Anyway, I don’t want compliments – I want butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and vanilla essence!”

“Vanilla?” The Doctor, his head half covered by a cupboard door, suddenly sounded distinctly guilty to her ears. “You’re absolutely sure it has to be vanilla? I’ve got some superb Darcavian tiia, which tastes exactly like it. You’d never notice the difference. Well, almost exactly like it as long as you don’t –”

“Doctor,” she said firmly. “I want you to take me home now, and we will complete this lesson in my kitchen, where I most definitely have all the requisite ingredients – and, what’s more, if I run out, I can pop down to the Co-op for more without having to bring down a totalitarian government on the way.”

*

“Now,” she said later, over a large cup of tea and slice of perfectly-made chocolate cake, “don’t tell me that wasn’t a lot simpler.”

The Doctor clearly had an excellent retort to that, but was impeded by a mouthful of cake and nearly choked instead.

“Quite,” she said, unfairly taking that as agreement, but with a twinkle in her eye. “And before we leave, I suggest we stock up on some of the necessary supplies for the TARDIS, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you.”

Evelyn noted the sarcasm, and smiled to herself. “Oh, and that was an exceptional cake for a first attempt, by the way.”

“I’m immune to flattery,” said the Doctor, even though she knew that wasn’t true. He gave her a sudden smile in return. “Anyway, I had an excellent teacher.”

She wasn’t immune to flattery, either.


End file.
